US police yesterday sought to uncover why a jobless immigrant went on a murderous rampage in a center where he had learned English, mowing down 13 people before killing himself.
The gunman at the heart of the tragedy in the quiet New York town of Binghamton was identified as Jiverly Voong, 41, of Vietnamese descent, who until early last month had been taking classes at the American Civic Association.
Early on Friday Voong, who had legally changed his name from Wong, donned body armor, blocked the center’s back doors with his car and burst into the front of the building, unleashing a hail of gunfire, police said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Without uttering a word, Voong shot two receptionists, killing one, then strode into a classroom where an English lesson was being held and shot dead another 12 people before turning the gun on himself, police chief Joseph Zikuski said.
The dead included four Chinese nationals, Beijing state media said, and a Philippine woman identified as Dolores Carbonillas Yigal. The alarm was raised by the surviving receptionist, hailed as a hero by the police chief, who played dead after being shot in the stomach. She then crawled under her desk to call 911 on her cellphone.
She and the other three injured were on Saturday still being treated in hospital. Two were in critical condition.
The small community, 215km northwest of New York city, voiced shock on Saturday at the outburst of violence, especially angered that it had happened at a center trying to help new immigrants pursue the American dream.
“That this tragedy should have happened in our community to our friends who only wanted to advance their knowledge and love of America is unbearable,” the center’s president Angela Leach told reporters as she fought back tears.
“Whatever drove this individual to do what he did, I cannot possibly fathom,” she said, vowing to continue the center’s work “to help people realize the dreams of American citizenship.”
The names of the victims have not yet been released, but mayor Matthew Ryan said Binghamton authorities had received inquiries from nine countries and two consulates about the safety of their nationals.
Voong, who had a gun permit since the late 1990s, had recently lost his job at the Shop Vac assembly plant, which the New York Daily News reported closed down in November.
“We picked up that apparently people were making fun of him. He felt he was being degraded because of ... his inability to speak English. And he was upset about that,” Zikuski said.
A former coworker of Voong quoted in the New York Times said he was surprised to see Voong at a local gym three times, including the night before the shootings.
Son Quach said Voong told him in Vietnamese he had been laid off with US$200 a week in unemployment benefit, and that he spent more time in the gym because he couldn’t find another job.
The man was also a gun enthusiast who often spent weekends shooting targets and trying out different guns at a local sporting goods store, the paper said.
“Obviously this investigation will focus a lot upon what the motive may have been. We may not ever come up with anything,” Zikuski said.
But he did rule out any tie to terrorism.
US President Barack Obama, speaking in Strasbourg on the sidelines of NATO summit, said: “I am heartbroken for the families who survived this tragedy.”
“It just underscores the degree to which in each of our countries, we have to guard against the kind of senseless violence that tragedy represents.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS